Research is Like Oil Prospecting

Research is industrial prospecting. The oil prospectors use every scientific means to find new paying wells. Oil is found by each one of a number of methods. My own group of men are prospecting in a different field, using every possible scientific means. We believe there are still things left to be discovered. We have only stumbled upon a few barrels of physical laws from the great pool of knowledge. Some day we are going to hit a gusher.

Charles F. Kettering, 'Industrial Prospecting', an address to the Founder Societies of Engineers (1923)

• metaphor
• research